Page:Life of David Haggart, who was executed at Edinburgh, 18th July, 1821, for the murder of the Dumfries jailor (1).pdf/17

17 passed from each wrist to each ankle. In this dreadful state of torture and confinement, he was conducted by John Richardson, and an Irish officer of the name of Robison, to Dumfries. They were three days and two nights upon the road, and all the time he never had his hand to his mouth, and was fed like a sucking turkey in bedlam, and was treated like a helpless infant. As to the officers who conveyed him, never could man behave better to his own son than they both did to him. He had known John Richardson before, and had long been acquainted with his humane disposition, which was tried and proved on this occasion. They travelled a good way on the road before he would acknowledge that ever he had seen John; but he saw that it was of no use to keep up his pretended ignorance any longer. Indeed, from the time he was placed in the condemned cells of Kilmainham, he had only done so out of obstinacy.

On their approach towards Dumfries, which was in the dark, there were many thousands of people on the road, many of them with torches in their hands, waiting his arrival; and when he got to the jail-door, it was scarcely possible to get him out of the coach for the multitude—all crowding for a sight of